


bright stars and black holes

by slytherinbarnes



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28390029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slytherinbarnes/pseuds/slytherinbarnes
Summary: warnings: language, anxiety, some death, some angst, some fluff, a hint of smut if you squint your eyes.summary: Josephine Lightbourne is used to getting what she wants. everything changes when she meets Clarke Griffin.
Relationships: Clarke Griffin/Josephine Lightbourne, Josephine Lightbourne/Gabriel Santiago | Xavier
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	bright stars and black holes

**Author's Note:**

> sub rosa season 7 is being pushed back to wednesday so I could get this post up for a secret santa I'm doing! i know it's not the fic you're looking for right now, but I hope you enjoy!

Josephine Lightbourne is used to getting what she wants. 

So when she is put into another host, one that fights back, it lights a fire in her that she hasn’t felt in decades. She loves Gabriel, she knows that for sure, but even things with him had become complacent. They’re in love, but they’re at odds, too fundamentally different in their approach to immortalhood to really be anything more than star crossed lovers. 

Everything changes for her when she meets Clarke Griffin.

Of course, she doesn’t meet Clarke in the traditional sense, not the way that most friends or lovers are introduced. Instead, Josephine is resurrected in Clarke’s body and meets her first through her friends, her family, her people. Forced to pretend to be the fallen Nightblood from Earth, John Murphy teaches her how to trick the people in Clarke’s life into believing that she’s still alive. But of course, it all goes to shit when Bellamy figures out her secret and threatens revenge. Luckily for her, she can be _very_ persuasive. 

And because Josephine always gets what she wants, Bellamy and his people agree to put everything behind them, to forget that her parents gave her an unwilling host. But when Josephine goes to bed for the first time in her new body, aided by a sleeping pill, a smile of satisfaction on her face, she soon learns that Clarke is not one to give up easy, not even in death.

When she meets Clarke in her mindspace, surrounded by metal and the hum of an engine, the face of her original body reflected back to her in the pointed glare of Clarke’s blue eyes, she suddenly realizes that the feelings she has for her stolen body are deeper than an appreciation for Clarke’s form. Instead, Josephine finds herself enamored with another person, more interesting than Gabriel, maybe even more interesting than herself. She finds herself falling for the angry Wanheda, the Commander of Death, the girl who refuses to back down even when faced with love.

-

Clarke Griffin is tired. 

Tired of war and death and running for her life, tired of killing and bearing it so her people don’t have to. She is too young to be this tired, but she has shouldered a lifetime of burdens in just a few short years, and it’s finally worn her down. So after the initial sadness of not getting to tell Madi and her mother and her friends goodbye, she finally starts to feel at peace for the first time in years. She thinks that maybe she can live forever in the Shallow Valley in her head, surrounded by her sketched memories, the scent of her father’s cologne still hanging in the air. Something rare that her mother had found at the trade post, some relic from pre Praimfaya Earth. Clarke’s sure it must have cost thousands of ration points, or at least a really good bribe, but she’s thankful her mom found it, because the smell is comforting to her. She’s sure that if she was back on the Ark and went into her parents room, that scent would still linger, despite the years it’s been since her dad’s death.

But just as Clarke starts to settle in her new home, her sketchbook in hand, something starts to happen. 

A low rumble, a prickle of unease across her skin, and she finds herself on her feet and out the door before she even knows what’s happening. And as she stares at the red door at the end of the hall, anxiety heavy in her chest, it swings open, blinding her with light before a pretty blonde girl steps into her space. Clarke knows immediately that it’s Josephine, she remembers the pictures from the shrine, but she’s sure that even without the pictures, she would know the imposter in her body. And at the sight of her, Clarke’s earlier peace has faded, replaced now with anger and determination, because as Clarke stares at Josephine, a smirk on the girl’s face, she is reminded of who she is. 

Clarke Griffin, Wanheda, the Commander of Death. 

And the Commander of Death backs down for nobody. 

-

Josephine stalks down the halls of the unfamiliar Ark, searching the ship for a sign of the girl that she sent running, scared for her life. 

She can hear the thump of her dad’s footsteps nearby, but there’s no sign of Clarke, the hallways suspiciously clear of any sign of her. She shakes her head, determined to get this over with once and for all, to finally have control of the body that does not belong to her. But as she turns a corner, her eyes land on an airlock. Down the hall, another door closes, Clarke surely disappearing behind it, but Josephine doesn’t care about that right now. 

Right now, she just wants to know what’s behind door number one. 

She walks towards the airlock door and pushes the button, stepping inside, and the doors slide shut behind her. When she turns to look, she sees that she’s no longer in the airlock, but just outside of it, transported into Clarke’s memory with the push of a button. Josephine smiles, aware that this memory must be strong, traumatic, if it sits on its own, away from Clarke’s sketches. 

She looks around at the scene in front of her, through the dimmed lights of the Ark. She can see a man, and who appears to be his son, lingering in the room, a handful of guards, and a woman with a long braid that Josephine immediately identifies as Abby, Clarke’s mom. Another man is standing in front of Abby, tall, handsome, whispering quietly, and Josephine only has to wonder who he is for a second before Clarke comes tearing around the corner, screaming out, “Dad!”

She watches with intrigue as Clarke is held back by a pair of guards, released on the command of the other man in the room. Clarke runs across the room and into her father’s arms, both of them crying as he holds her tight. He presses a watch into his daughter’s hand, and the man from before suddenly announces, “Jake, it’s time.”

Jake says his final goodbyes before he crosses the room and stands in front of the airlock, waiting for the doors to slide open. When he does, he steps inside, turning around to face the small crowd, Josephine among them. And in a move that Josephine is unprepared for, the guard near the airlock hits the button, sending Clarke’s dad flying out into space. Josephine’s breath stutters in her throat despite herself, watching as a younger Clarke falls apart in her mother’s arms, and she suddenly understands why Clarke ran past this memory. 

And as Josephine steps out of the airlock and back into the Ark in Clarke’s mind, she gets a flash of understanding for the scared girl running from her, all too familiar with watching a parent die.

-

Clarke glares at the red door at the end of the hall, a wreath adorned on it. 

Josephine now knows exactly how to get her our of her own head. Something that Clarke revealed to her in a moment of weakness, reminded of the tiredness that weighs heavy in her bones. But then Monty showed up this morning and reminded her of her need to fight and her desire to protect others, which is why Clarke now stands in front of the door to Josephine’s head. 

Monty offered to go with her, but she shook her head, letting him know that this is something she needs to do alone. So she takes a deep breath to steady herself, and then she twists the knob and steps inside of Josephine’s mindspace. It’s organized, cleaner than her own, all of Josephine’s memories arranged into books and stacked onto row upon row of shelves. Clarke feels a rush of overwhelming anxiety, wondering how she’ll find anything to help her in a library this big, but then she remembers what her dad used to tell her when she got stuck on a particularly difficult word problem in school. _Take a deep breath and start at the beginning._

Clarke wanders to the first stack of books, her eyes roaming across the titles quickly, trying to find anything useful. She sees Josephine’s first date, her prom, her graduation from college. Training for the Eligius mission, journeying through space, her first few days on Sanctum. But suddenly, the books end and the next set of volumes begin, all labeled Josephine Ada Lightbourne II. Clarke backtracks a little, to the final copy of Josephine I, and she pulls the book out and flips it open. 

The library around her transforms into the chaotic landscape of Sanctum. There are trees on all sides of her, except for in the small clearing to her left, which houses a series of tents. Clarke steps into the clearing as two motorbikes drive up, and when they pull their helmets off, Clarke finds Josephine approaching with a guy. They’re talking quietly to each other, but Josephine seems to be in an excited rush, searching for her father. As she draws closer to a large tent in the center of the clearing, a woman lets out a wail from inside, and Josephine’s smile drops as she starts to slow down outside of the tent, trying to figure out what’s wrong. Clarke moves closer to the pretty blonde, starting to understand a little bit of the obsession that Josephine has for herself, but she shakes the thought free as a woman bursts out of the tent in front of them, clutching the side of her neck and chest. 

Josephine takes off running towards her, a worried cry ripping from her throat as she reaches the woman. “Mom! Mom!”

Clarke watches as Simone hits the ground, Josephine immediately sinking to her knees beside her. And before she can even truly process the loss of her mother, an older man stalks out of the tent, an axe in his hand. Josephine’s expression morphs into one of horror as her mind starts to put the pieces together, looking at him with fear. “Dad, what are you doing?”

Clarke has one second to take in Russell’s first body before he grinds out, “Sanctum is mine”, and slashes his daughter’s throat. Clarke can feel Josephine’s terror as she processes the idea that her father just killed her mother, and now her, and she can feel Josephine’s final wave of emotions as she struggles through her last few breaths. The last emotion Clarke feels surprises her, an emotion so strong it washes over her like a tidal wave: regret. She can feel it squeezing her chest as she watches Josephine take one final breath, the light behind her eyes now dead to the world.

Clarke snaps the book that is still in her hand closed, taking her back to Josephine’s mindspace. She starts to feel like she might be a little in over her head, because she can feel herself pitying the woman who snatched her body. She shakes her head and shoves the book back onto the shelf, stuffing the ounce of feeling she had for Josephine back down with it. 

And with another steadying breath, she opens her mouth and yells towards the open door, “Monty, I need your help!”

-

Josephine got really into meditation when she was in college.

Her mom swore up and down it would help her with her studies, but the only thing it ever did for her was give her a headache and piss her off. That is, until she started body snatching, and she found that sometimes, she could find memories that lingered in the brain, unreached by the mind wiping fluid. She got a sick sense of pleasure searching for these memories in each new host, watching the memories of someone else’s life unfold, that person now pushed out of their own body, and she always made sure to seek them out the first few nights in her new host. 

The exception, of course, is her current host. 

With Clarke still in her own mind, and Ryker now working to help rid her of the problem, Josephine hasn’t had a chance to search Clarke’s mind for these phantom memories. Not that she’d need to, because she could just waltz right into Clarke’s mindspace and start touching the sketches on the walls, but she’s starting to wonder if those phantom memories exist before a mind is completely gone. They must, if they remain even after the procedure. 

So as Ryker works in the shop downstairs, building her an EMP to rid Clarke of her neural mesh, she sits upstairs in the loft, cross legged, her eyes closed, her breathing slowed. She repeats a few mantras for a while, clearing her mind and peeling away the layers of this world until the only thing around her is her inner mind. She imagines herself pulling back the layers of her brain, Clarke’s brain, searching between the folds and around the corners for any memories hidden deep inside of her. 

Finally, after what feels like hours, Josephine finds one.

She pushes herself inside the memory, the blank space around her transforming to a cool brown stone. There’s a long hallway stretched in front of her, a door halfway through it, and she can hear soft murmurs from the other side. She walks towards it and pushes her away inside, unaffected by the locks on the thick metal door, and her eyes roam over a control room of sorts. In front of her, stretching from one wall to the next, are a series of cameras, chaos flickering across each one. She sees someone strapped down to a table, their mouth open in a silent scream, and it takes Josephine a second to realize that it’s Abby. On another video feed beside it, she can see Octavia, surrounded by a large group of people, guns pointed at her from every angle. As she takes in the videos in front of her, trying to piece together where she is, she hears a voice behind her mutter, “Together.”

Josephine spins around, her eyes landing on Bellamy and Clarke, unnoticed by her before this moment, their hands slowly pushing a lever forward. Josephine rolls her eyes, remembering John’s stories of Clarke’s genocide in Mount Weather, her eyes now privy to the moment in question. She can see the turmoil on Bellamy and Clarke’s faces, the heartbreak they’re now faced with as they kill hundreds of people in one swift motion. 

Josephine starts to walk towards the pair, but the scenery changes, and she realizes this must be a series of memories, hidden deep in her mind so Clarke can pretend they don’t exist. She sees now that they’re outside a settlement of some sort, a sign at the front labeled, “Camp Jaha”. Bellamy and Clarke stand just outside the gates as the rest of their people file inside, and Josephine can tell that this is a goodbye based on their body language alone. She’s always been good at reading people, especially in their most vulnerable moments, and right now the young leaders have heartbreak written all over their faces. 

She watches them hug before Clarke walks away, straight towards her, disappearing into the woods before the scene changes again. This time, Clarke is crouched low between a pair of trees, hidden in their shadows, the moon high overhead. Clarke’s hands are covering her face and her shoulders are shaking, and when her hands finally drop, her mouth is open in a silent sob. She’s trying to keep quiet, fearful of whatever may be lurking in the night, but every now and then a soft sob pushes past her lips and echoes in the space between them. 

Josephine finds herself wanting to comfort this girl, to reassure her that she made the right choice in Mount Weather, genocide or not, but she can’t. Because this is a memory and Clarke is her enemy, and she shouldn’t care at all for the young blonde breaking down in front of her. She starts to wonder if she should try to leave the memory, starting to feel like she’s overstepping, _something unfamiliar to her_ , when she feels a hand push her shoulder, hard. 

Her eyes fly open and land on Ryker, a tired expression on his face, his hand pointing to the shop down below. “It’s nearly time.”

-

Clarke frantically steps into the library, looking around at the piles of discarded books. 

The barrier between their minds is breaking down and the clock for her body is ticking, making it easier for her to grasp bits and pieces of whatever is going on outside of her head. From what she can gather, she and Josephine are now with Bellamy, the EMP used to temporarily disable the shield instead of wipe her mind, and now Clarke is desperately trying to find anything that will save her life.

She is burning through memories as fast as she can, picking up books, exploring the contents inside, and then tossing them aside if they’re useless to her. 

And so far, they’ve all been useless. 

She’s been jumping around from version to version, too anxious to explore the memories chronologically, and she currently finds herself back at Josephine Lightbourne the First, her hand reaching for a book labeled, _Long Nights._ Clarke flips it open and feels herself get pulled into the memory, landing in an elevator, right beside Josephine. Her blonde hair is the longest she’s seen it at this point, falling over her shoulder in soft waves. A black, sparkly dress hugs her figure, and there’s glitter smeared around her eyes. Red lipstick is traced around the perfect curve of her lips, and Clarke feels a low tug in her stomach, a flutter of something she wants to ignore.

Because Josephine Lightbourne is standing in front of her, and she looks _hot_.

Clarke shakes her head and lets out a sigh of relief when the elevator dings, letting them off into some long hallway, and Clarke is thankful for the space she can now keep between her and her enemy. _She’s hoping if she says it enough, she’ll start to believe it again_. Josephine clicks down the hall on a pair of heels, confident and beautiful, finally stopping when she reaches a door at the end of the hall. She knocks twice and waits patiently for someone to answer the door.

The door swings open and Clarke has three seconds to take in one of the most incredible women she’s ever seen. She looks a lot like Lexa, her eyes bright green and her brown hair cascading down her back, and she greets Josephine with a pretty smile. 

They’re motioned inside and Clarke scrambles in after Josephine, even though the closing door will have no effect on her, and she watches as the two women greet each other softly. 

“Did anyone see you?”

“Only the doorman.”

The brunette smiles. “James is discreet.”

“Good, because I don’t think Eligius can handle another scandal. Not after losing the prisoner ship.”

“You and I both know that ship isn’t lost. Those prisoners were killed.”

Josephine shrugs, a slight lift of her right shoulder, uninterested in the conversation. “Maybe. But you and I both know that I don’t care.”

The brunette smirks again, cocking her head to the side, playing along. “And what do you care about, Josephine?”

“You.”

And then they collide in a kiss.

Clarke feels her breath stutter in her lungs, watching as the two women kiss passionately, unaware of her presence in this memory. They move from the doorway to the couch, kicking off their shoes as they move, and Clarke is frozen in her place by the door, unsure what to do. It’s only when she sees the woman slide Josephine’s dress straps down her arms does she slam the book closed, sending her back into the large library. 

She throws the book away as if it burned her, turning to lean against the shelves and catch her breath, willing away the butterflies in her stomach and the blush along her cheeks. She fans herself slightly, glad that no one is here to see her in this moment, unable to escape the memory as one single thought repeats in her mind on a loop:

_Maybe the memories weren’t useless after all._

-

Josephine looks away from Bellamy’s sleeping form, wondering how the hell anyone could get comfortable enough in a cave to get some sleep. 

But then she starts to think that he might have the right idea, because who knows what’s gonna happen to them tomorrow. _Maybe she’ll need the strength to fight. Maybe she’ll need energy to run._ So she closes her eyes, relying on some of her meditation tricks to clear her mind and lull her to sleep, the cave around her fading into a large stone tower. Josephine doesn’t recognize the building, which means that the pull of Clarke’s mind is getting stronger, and that the barrier between their minds is getting weaker. At this rate, they must only have a few hours left.

And Josephine knows that she should wake herself up, resist the pull of Clarke’s mind to her own and try to buy them a few more hours, but then she catches sight of _her_.

Lexa.

The woman that John told her all about before she saw her for herself in Clarke’s memories. Josephine usually skips any of Clarke’s memories that involve the dark haired Commander, something about her presence annoying the shit out of Josephine. But this time, she stays, catching an eyeful of blonde hair near the back of the room, curious about what is happening between Clarke and Lexa at this moment. 

Clarke’s hair is long, with streaks of pink and various braids, and she looks angry, hardened, different from the soft girl in the earlier memories. Josephine can’t decide if she loves or hates it, if she craves the quiet girl or the angry warrior, but she doesn’t have long to think before Clarke opens her mouth and speaks to an approaching Lexa. “I stayed because it was the right thing to do for my people.”

“Our people.”

Clarke and Josephine both roll their eyes, not believing the warrior turned heda. Clarke closes the space between herself and Lexa, and Josephine moves closer to Clarke, subconsciously drawn to her at this point. She watches as the blonde narrows her eyes, her voice threatening. “If you betray me _again_ , I-”

“I won’t.” Lexa takes a deep breath before dropping to her knees in front of Clarke, looking up at her with a serious expression. “I swear fealty to you, Clarke kom Skaikru. I vow to treat your needs as my own, and your people as my people.”

The energy in the room changes, and Josephine watches Clarke intently, willing her to turn away from the woman that left her to commit a genocide on her own. But instead, Clarke reaches out for Lexa, urging her to take her hand, and Josephine rolls her eyes, turning away. 

She forces herself awake, unable to stand the sight of the couple any longer, something akin to jealousy burning in her gut. Except that Josephine Lightbourne does not get jealous, because she always gets what she wants, and that Clarke Griffin is her enemy. Josephine feels nothing for her beyond a desire to have her body, and _that’s. it._

-

Clarke runs through the halls of the Ark, grabbing books and tossing them into the airlock, trying desperately to put space between her mind and Josephine’s. Right now, everything is blurring together, Josephine’s memories manifesting and moving all over Clarke’s space, and a warning message blares overhead. 

Clarke pushes the button to seal the airlock and send the books out into space before she opens the door and repeats the process, frantically tossing books into the gray coffin. As she picks up a particularly large stack of books, one of them tumbles off the top, the spine smacking loudly on the floor, the book falling open. And before Clarke can help it, she is sucked in, taken into one of Josephine’s memories, dropped right onto the stairs of Sanctum. 

Clarke picks the book up from its place at her feet, fully intending on closing it and getting back to dumping Josephine’s memories, when the woman in question runs past her, tears streaming down her face, expression distraught. Clarke can’t help the wave of curiosity that washes over her, and she turns to run after Josephine, following her down the steps, around the mountain, and through the fields around Sanctum. Josephine is quiet for a long time, just softly crying as she runs after a figure in the distance, and Clarke has no idea what’s going on until Josephine sees the figure near the edge of the shield, and she screams, “Gabriel!”

Gabriel stops and turns around, wearing a body unfamiliar to Clarke, and he looks at Josephine, clearly conflicted. Josephine closes the space between them as much as he will allow, stopping a few feet apart, just at the edge. She can hear guards in the distance heading their way, and Gabriel looks behind them warily, before looking back to his lover. “What you did was wrong, Josephine, and I can’t sit around and pretend like everything is okay anymore!”

“Gabriel, I’m sorry! Everything I did, I did for us. But if you want this to stop, we’ll stop, okay? These will be our last bodies, and when we die, we die for good. Just come back with me, okay? Let me fix this.”

“You can’t fix this.”

“Baby, yes I can. You know I can.”

Gabriel seems to be softening, until an angry expression crosses his features and he yells, “No! Stop it! I’m not gonna let you manipulate me anymore, okay? I’m done.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Yes. I do.’ The guards start to sound closer now, and Gabriel confirms as much when he frantically looks over Clarke’s shoulder before turning back to Josephine, one last time. “I’ve loved you for over a century, but our love is not worth the price we are paying.”

Josephine’s distraught expression deepens, and she watches Gabriel back up towards the shield. “Gabriel, please!”

He mutters, “I’m sorry”, and then he runs through the shield, bursting out on the other side, unaffected by the radiation, thanks to his Nightblood. Josephine drops to her knees, a heartbroken cry ripping from her throat, no longer following Gabriel despite her ability to step through the shield too. The guards rush past her, waiting for the shield to drop so they can pursue the man she loves, but she doesn’t notice.

Josephine Lightbourne is too busy falling apart, learning for the first time what it feels like to lose.

Clarke is sucked out of the memory, pulled back into the Ark and plopped down in front of an angry looking Josephine. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Clarke rolls her eyes, faking a bravery she doesn’t feel in the face of the angry woman. “Oh please, like you haven’t spent the last few days snooping through my memories?”

Josephine looks surprised that she noticed, _as if she couldn’t_ , and she shakes her head, her expression softening. “That’s different.”

“Doubt it.”

Their argument is cut short by the warning system intensifying, and Clarke knows that if they don’t vent everything right now, they’re both dead. She sets the outer doors to remain open, and then she grabs Josephine’s hand, dragging her through the halls of the Ark, back to her room. She pulls the door shut tight, ignoring Josephine’s protests, and seconds later they hear all of her memories vent, sucked out into the space that is the rest of their shared brain. As soon as it’s done, Josephine disappears, returning to the real world and leaving Clarke alone in her head. 

-

She doesn’t see her again until her body is strapped up to a series of machines, and Clarke is sedated prior to her scheduled death, putting Josephine right back in her head. She smiles at Clarke as soon as she sees her, and it seems genuine, lighting up her eyes and making her look younger. It makes Clarke feel warm all over, despite everything, and she tries to push it away as Josephine closes the space between them. “All I ever wanted was immortality, but now I’m starting to think that I was wrong. The immortality was about something else, a way to keep me alive until I got what I really wanted.”

Clarke shakes her head, not understanding, and Josephine mutters, “You.”

Clarke thinks of the knife she slipped into her pants earlier, the one she pulled from her memory of killing Finn, tucking it into her waistband in case she needed it. Her fingers twitch a little as she tries to figure out the conversation, giving Josephine a hard look. “Me? Or my body?”

“You, Clarke. Just you.”

“So does that mean you’ll let me have my body back?” Josephine nods, and Clarke eyes her suspiciously. “Everything you put me through the last couple of days, and you’re choosing to just give up? I don’t buy it.”

“Not choosing to give up, choosing _you_. Don’t you get it, Clarke? We’re meant for each other. Your entire life was spent cycling through boring boy after boring girl, always in search of something better, greater. You thought you had it with Lexa, but even she would become nothing to you.”

“That’s not true.”

Josephine scoffs, “I’ve been inside your head, Clarke. I know what you want, even if you won’t admit it to yourself. Lexa was a star, one that would burn bright and hot until she dimmed and you eventually left her, bored. I’m a black hole, endless, an adversary, something you’re always trying to fight off, but eventually you’ll get sucked into. _That’s_ what you want. You want the fight. Lexa was wrapped around your finger; she bent her entire rule as Commander to cater to your wishes. But I’ll never be that for you. I’m someone enamored by you, someone who wants to see what makes you tick, what gets you going. _But I want to be the one that makes you tick._ I want to crawl inside your head and break you down piece by piece until I have every part of you figured out.”

“How romantic. You’re really selling yourself here.”

“I don’t have to sell myself because you’ve already bought in. You, Clarke Griffin, you love a challenge. You love to save the broken, redeem the sinner. You want a love that swallows you up and keeps you wild, a love that challenges you and distracts you from the mess in your head. And you already know that I can give that to you, otherwise, you would have slit my throat with that knife already.”

Clarke’s eyes widen, her hand subconsciously hovering over the knife tucked into her waistband. Josephine raises a single brow, unconcerned. “I told you. I know you, Clarke.”

Clarke rolls her eyes. “Watching a few of my memories doesn’t mean that you know me.”

“Maybe not, but I know enough. Now put the knife down, and choose me. Choose me over everyone else, and your body is yours.”

“So I pick you and Gabriel boots you out of my head. Then what?”

“You find me a new host.”

Clarke scoffs, “And what makes you so sure that I will? Who’s to say I won’t agree to your terms right now, and then smash your mind drive once I get my body back?”

Josephine shakes her head, a smirk on her face. “You won’t.”

And Clarke sighs, because she knows she’s right. Because the second that Josephine mentioned a host, she started running through options in her head. Somehow, throughout this crazy fight to get her body back, she saw a new side of Josephine. She saw beyond the sarcasm and body snatching, down to the scared girl that was killed by her own father, that lost Gabriel despite everything she did for him, the girl who watched someone shoot themselves just because she ignored their advances. Somehow, throughout it all, Clarke Griffin started to fall in love.

Which is why she looks up at Josephine with a nod, grabbing the knife from her waistband and tossing it away. “Fine, I choose you.”

Josephine’s face splits into a grin, and Clarke swears she hears her let out a little breath, as if she was actually nervous that Clarke would refuse her offer. Still, she maintains her air of confidence as she looks at Clarke, scrunching her nose up a little when she says, “Good. Now kiss me the way you always wanted to be kissed. The way you dreamed about when you tried to imagine your future.”

Clarke shakes her head, ignoring the vague reference to a memory that Josephine has clearly seen, already reaching out to pull Josephine closer, her hands automatically tangling in her hair. She crashes her lips to Josephine’s, both of them clutching each other tight, afraid to let go, and Clarke suddenly realizes that Josephine was right. 

She is a black hole. 

Clarke can feel herself spinning, spiraling, being pulled in by the chaos of the woman in her arms, and for the first time in her life, instead of hanging on…

_She lets go._

-


End file.
